Whether you’re new to the market, looking to make a switch, or simply curious about what else is out there, it’s helpful to have at least a high-level understanding of the major solutions available to you.

Here, we break down the key selling points and differences between Lifetimely and Polar Analytics.

To see how other alternatives compare to Lifetimely, click here.

Pricing

Polar Analytics pricing plan is based on gross merchandise volume, which in practice, is the same as revenue. Pricing starts at $300/month, growing up to $1600/month depending on order volume on the cheapest plan and $2200 on the most expensive one. There's also custom pricing for stores doing above $20M. 

(Beyond 10,000 monthly orders, your only option is a custom-priced plan.)

On the other hand, Lifetimely’s offers five plans (including a free plan) that are several times more affordable.

At $49/mo, Lifetimely PRO is at least 4x less expensive than Polar's plan despite offering same or better versions of nearly every feature.

Even our top-level plan, which includes several premium features that Polar doesn't offer even in custom plans, for almost half as much as Polar's most expensive self serve plan.

And since our top plan includes unlimited revenue and orders, your savings become much more pronounced as your business grows.

Integrations

Metrics and Reporting

P&L metrics, marketing metrics, and dashboards

The standard P&L metrics and reports included in all Lifetimely and Polar Analytics plans are very similar. Both apps offer a comprehensive P&L dashboard, a product-centered report, and a tab that lists the details of individual orders.

But Lifetimely offers a much wider range of features to help you build unlimited customized dashboards with your choice of P&L metrics, campaign-level marketing metrics, and advanced reports. You can set goals, establish target safe zones for your metrics, create dashboard for different team roles, and easily share reports with outside stakeholders.

Polar Analytics has some options to create alerts and custom reports, but overall their customization options are much more limited.

LTV and other advanced metrics

Like Lifetimely, Polar Analytics uses cohort analysis to calculate customer lifetime value (LTV). Their LTV report includes alternative LTV metrics and useful filtering capabilities for additional segmentation.

But overall, Lifetimely’s customer behavior reports - especially our LTV report - are much more robust and include far more tools for deriving actionable insights from your data.

Some advanced features in Lifetimely that don’t exist in Polar Analytics:

• Repurchase rate reports for learning the buying habits of repurchasing customers

• Customer product journey maps for planning effective winback campaigns

• Compare cohorts feature for apples-to-apples comparisons of how different customer traits influence LTV

• LTV drivers report for automated insights on the factors underlying your highest and lowest LTV customers

Lifetimely is also the only app to offer month-to-month LTV projections, which we’ll cover below.

Lifetime Value Report with predictive data

Other major features and selling points

Polar Analytics offers one major feature not available in Lifetimely - a UTM attribution tool for tying sales to the marketing efforts that led to them.

Lifetimely has several core features that no other competitor can offer. Among these, the highest value-adds are:

• Month-to-month LTV projections: Many apps measure historical LTV, but only Lifetimely gives you AI-generated projections of how much each of your cohorts will continue to spend over time. These LTV projections are the most actionable metrics available for revenue forecasting, financial planning, and customer-centric marketing.

• Industry benchmarks: Our Benchmarks tool shows you how your KPIs stack up versus your competitors by charting your major metrics on a bell curve of other Shopify stores. This helps you set achievable business goals and identify which metrics have the greatest room for improvement. No other app on the market has a comparable tool.

Benchmarks against other stores in your category

Conclusion - which is best for you?

Polar Analytics might be a good fit if you value their Criteo integration.

If you have a strong need for a UTM attribution tool (which Lifetimely doesn’t offer), you’re probably better off with BeProfit or another competitor with a similar feature set due to the hefty monthly price.

Otherwise, Lifetimely’s plans offer a much stronger set of features at a fraction of the price.

Lifetimely offers more comprehensive metrics, far more customization options, the most accurate LTV data in the industry, and several unique industry-defining features.

These are all available for a much lower cost than even Polar Analytics cheapest plan.

If you’d like to give us a try, you can sign up for our Free plan or give one of our premium plans a free 14-day trial here.

And if you have any questions, just shoot us an email at help@lifetimely.io. We’d love to hear from you!